The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Sherlock Holmes has retired to the country to work on his magnum opus of detection and keep bees. But as he is following bees through the hills one day, he runs across the brilliant, damaged, somewhat prickly Mary Russell. When she deduces what he is doing, and shocks him by solving his current bee tracking mystery for him, a complicated and intellectually stimulating relationship is born. Mary becomes Holmes' apprentice and friend, and of course Scotland Yard eventually calls Holmes out of retirement on a desperately important case.
The only thing better than finding this book was discovering that it's a whole series. Laurie R. King weaves smart mysteries that are worthy successors to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classics. I think the character of Holmes is pitch perfect- that King does a convincing job of peeking in on Holmes the man without revealing too much, distorting his character, or dissolving into sappiness. Of course, giving Holmes a female apprentice lends the series a distinctly feminist flavor in the sense that King quite clearly believes that women can be just as observant, intelligent, and scholarly as men, but I never felt like Mary Russell as a character stomps Holmes or men in general. I couldn't put it down, especially once the plot thickens and Russell and Holmes set off solving mysteries together.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

This book really should sink under the weight of its own braininess, but it's just too good to ever quite do it. Warning: if you are not an over-educated English major, former homeschooler who read way too many classics of Western literature, or didn't really pay close attention in those college English classes, this probably won't tickle your pickle. For example, Blue, the hero, narrates and footnotes her life as she goes along like a good little scholar and the titles of the chapters are titles of classic works of literature.
But I know I could sure relate to the over-educated, under-socialized, emotionally scarred protagonist who lives her life in books until her senior year of high school. 'Course her circumstances are a little unusual. Her mother died when she was young, and her charismatic, pedantic, extremely liberal political science professor of a father takes off guest lecturing across the country, daughter in tow. The whole thing starts off as a meandering, almost-too-smart coming-of-age novel. Blue, the heroine, settles down at an exclusive private school for her Senior year, is befriended by the fascinating film teacher Hannah and pulled into her small orbit of prodigies. Relationships, drama, first love- All of these eventually give way to a dramatic murder mystery that develops into conspiracy-theory thriller to rival the Da Vinci Code.
One of the most original books I've read. If nothing else, you'll get to say hello to all the S.A.T. words you've been pining for so desperately since high school. And I think it's absolutely incredible that this was Marisha Pessl's first novel.